James Forsyth

There was something entirely predictable about the mortgage on David Cameron’s constituency home getting drawn into the expenses scandal. Even Tory MPs supportive of the line Cameron has taken on this issue have, in private, pointed to it; noting that Cameron himself had found the most politically palatable way to make the system work for him. (It should be stressed that Cameron’s claims for mortgage interest are completely within the rules). Grumbling about Cameron’s own arrangements have grown as some in the Parliamentary party have become suspicious that Cameron is using the crisis to get rid of unwated members of the old guard.

Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo next month is being hyped as a major part of his administration’s outreach to the ‘Muslim world’. One can only hope that it is a better, more realistic speech than the one Obama gave in Berlin last July setting out how trans-Atlantic relations could be improved. In that speech, Obama missed a huge opportunity to tell the Europeans that even he—a candidate who was favoured by European elites and publics by huge margins—thought they were shirking their responsibilities in Afghanistan. He should have made clear that America listening more would not by itself solve anywhere near all of the problems in the alliance.

The Independent’s gossip column reports that Labour is having some trouble recruiting celebrity talent to us annual fundraising dinner: “Party press officers insist that they have a "surprise singing performer" to compound [Eddie Izard’s] credentials. Who could it be? The usual cast of characters (Mick Hucknall, the Bee Gees, Heather Small) refuse to respond to Pandora's advances. Leona Lewis replies (her manager Simon is a good friend of the PM) but only to issue a denial.” So, who would be the most suitable musical act? I’m thinking Roxette singing ‘It’s over now’. But I’m sure Coffee Housers can come up with a better suggestion. A bottle of the usual champagne for the best one.

Three MPs have announced they are standing down at the next election today; proof that the expenses scandal is getting more deadly for MPs as it goes on. But, in the background, the conversation about whether Brown can survive what Anne McEloy has dubbed the Ides of June is getting louder. Over at the always excellent Comment Central, Daniel Finkelstein and Philip Collins try and work out what the percentage chances of Brown being removed are. Danny’s calculations lead him to conclude that there’s “only a 12% chance that [Brown] goes”. I suspect, although this is based more on a hunch than mathematics, that the number is higher than this.

Today is one of those days that remind you that the international situation is as serious as the economic one and the crisis facing our democracy. No one quite knows what North Korea means by its nuclear tests and declarations that the 1953 armistice is no longer operative. Indeed, no one even really knows who is actually in charge there. In Pakistan, another major terrorist attack in Lahore, the capital of the Punjab, is a reminder of the threat that the insurgents pose to the integrity of a country where the issues of Islamism, nuclear weapons, weak states and support for terrorist groups all come together.

There is something depressingly predictable about the news that extremist groups are filling the void left by the Pakistani government in terms of accommodating the refugees from the Swat valley. Save the Children estimates that only 20 percent of the roughly 2 million refugees are in government run camps. The Washington Post reports that: ‘Outside the camps, groups with radical Islamist agendas are rushing to fill the void left by the paucity of government services. The Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, the successor to a group known as Jamaat-ud-Dawa, has established a major presence in areas near Swat, feeding tens of thousands of displaced people and providing them with quality medical care.

The headline coming out of David Cameron’s speech tomorrow, which The Guardian publishes as an essay tomorrow, will be his rejection of PR. But I’m more interested by how Cameron is again hitting the right notes about broader political reform.  Take these two passages: “I believe the central objective of the new politics we need should be a massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power: from the state to citizens; from the government to parliament; from Whitehall to communities; from the EU to Britain; from judges to the people; from bureaucracy to democracy. ...

There is a real danger that Iran acquires a nuclear capability before the US-led coalition works out what it is prepared to do to stop it. As David Ignatius writes in the Washington Post today, there isn’t any attractive solution to this problem: “The quiet, deniable covert activities undertaken so far haven't stopped the Iranian program, and they're not likely to do so in the future. There is no magic bullet. The best hope of stopping Iran from making a bomb is diplomacy, backed by the threat of tough sanctions, backed by the ultimate threat of overt military power”.